“Rated X” Feels Flaccid

"Rated X" Feels Flaccid

(indieWIRE/1.27.2000) —For a movie teeming with sex, drugs and a dollop of violence, EmilioEstevez’s “Rated X” is conspicuously flaccid. With none of the creativeenergy of “Boogie Nights” or the compelling characters of “The Peopleversus Larry Flynt,” this run-of-the mill biopic about the rise and fallof the Mitchell Brothers, is a quintessentially made for TV experience.Distributed by Showtime Network, which boasts “no limits,” the film,despite its plenteous nudity and sex, lacks edge and is hopelesslymarred.

Look alike real life brothers Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen play Jimand Artie Mitchell, a couple of close knit brothers who embark on acareer of innovative pornography in the 70s and 80s in San Francisco.But the picture, with a snoozer of a screenplay by David McCumber andNorman Snider, offers no insight into what, in fact, were the groundbreaking elements of the Mitchell’s particular brand of fuck flicks.Insight, in fact, is absent altogether in the face value flick.

Early scenes clunkily establish Jim, the elder as a protective olderbrother who saves Artie from an array of tangles including ones withtheir tough-guy pop (Terry O’Quinn). This over-stressed dynamiccontinues through their lives, until, ultimately, Jim stops saving hisbrother.

Once in freewheeling Frisco, the groovy, mod brothers begin to make pornwith a gaggle of hippie helpers including Jim’s girlfriend who willdisappear from the film within a few scenes with scant explanation. Onenever really gets to know any of the characters in “Rated X” and womencome and go, without ever mustering much personality. But neither do thebrothers Mitchell. Estevez’s Jim, is rather bland, his concerns forArtie’s excesses is his main feature. Sheen plays the frenetic, coked-upArtie, but neither character intrigues. The storyline ticks ofbiographical facts in a perfunctory and uninspired manner, from Jim’scollege film course to Artie’s multiple marriages.

Emilio Estevez directs “Rated X“

Credit: Ava V. Gerlitz

As their stars rise and the money and publicity cascades in, cocainebecomes a constant presence and much footage is spent on the snorting.Fame followed by drugs and a cataclysmic spin out of control is tiredformula and Estevez’s thoroughly uncreative approach puts the banal plotfront and center and the dull-as-dishwater dialogue leaves one clamoringfor the remote control.

The X oeuvre “Beyond the Green Door” gives the filmmakers cash andcachet, but its exceptional qualities are never made plain. Its star,Marilyn Chambers, is a somewhat refreshing female in this tale, whoshrewdly demands a hefty sum. Though she seems to make and shake theirworld, she too disappears without a trace in this slipshod picture. TheMitchell’s enlist the FBI to help them battle the mob, but this, moreinteresting component, is left to dangle.

Estevez does not incorporate the tenor of the times to his advantage.Hairstyles and duds communicate the 70s in San Francisco, but thesoundtrack is largely generic and the social upheavals and politics aremerely glimpsed at. A small band of women protest pornography in thelate 70s, but the subject of feminist response to porn is given shortshrift. The shifting, lopsided camera angles and a good rainstormstrive to infuse tension at the climax, but the brother’s final standoffis unmoving. We’ve been given no good reason to give a hoot about eitherbald pornographer.